[Jobs] Teaching Parents to Help Their Children Succeed

[PETER ALTSCHUL]

Hi:

I think many of the points made in the article below apply equally well to 
people with disabilities and those trying to serve us.

Peter

Teaching Parents to Help Their Children Succeed

By Yoji Cole © 2006 DiversityInc.com® August 16, 2006

This article originally appeared in the July/August 2006 issue of 
DiversityInc magazine

Danetta Brooks' children-Amber, 11, and Lillie, 9-don't get to play outside 
a lot. Gang members tend to shoot guns on the streets that run outside the 
Brooks' home, so the children play inside where they're safer.

Brooks, 46, and her children live in the Nickerson Gardens neighborhood of 
Watts, Calif. For Brooks, focusing her children on studying is the best 
method to keep Amber and Lillie occupied and constructive-and get them out 
of the neighborhood.

"I encourage them," says Brooks. "I give them goals and tell them not to 
make the same mistakes I did."

Showing children in low-income neighborhoods the link between education and 
success is a tough task when distractions include bullets. Many of their 
parents haven't been able to escape poverty, and they find themselves 
overwhelmed just trying to survive let alone teach, nurture and motivate. 
But more of these parents, like Brooks, are making their children's 
education a priority. And they are being helped by progressive companies 
that understand the need to develop a future work force that increasingly 
includes people of color as well as educational leaders.

>From the Principal's Office

Principal Brenda Manuel is focused on teachers, parents and the 
administration at 112th Street Elementary School, which Amber and Lillie 
Brooks attend. The school is struggling. Currently on the statewide Academic 
Performance Index, which rates schools from one to 10, 112th Street 
Elementary is a one. Less than one-third of its students are considered 
proficient in math, and less than a fifth in English. Under the federal No 
Child Left Behind Act, the school could face sanctions if it fails to raise 
its test scores significantly this year.

Every student at 112th Street Elementary is poor enough to qualify for 
subsidized meals. Most of the students live in Nickerson Gardens, and many 
come from single-parent families or foster care. The school is 62 percent 
Latino and 38 percent black, and more than half of the students are learning 
English as a second language. To combat those bleak statistics, Manuel is 
challenging parents to hold themselves and teachers accountable for properly 
educating their children.

The biggest obstacle is "low expectations. Parents, teachers, children with 
years of not being successful think they can't do it. So we're shifting to 
'Yes, I can,'" says Manuel. "We all have to take responsibility. If children 
are not doing well, it's not the child's fault."

Manuel is encouraging parents to sit with their child's teacher and learn 
the educational goals for the year. She shows parents how a quality teacher 
instructs and she talks with parents about everyone's responsibility in the 
proper education of the child. Manuel asks parents to be a constant presence 
at the school, that they help teachers in classrooms, work as crosswalk 
guards and even attend a kickboxing class with teachers.

"No parents should feel they can't come to school," says Manuel, who ensures 
that Spanish-speaking staff members are present.

"Everyone needs to know that this is their school because when they do, 
they'll take care of it," says Manuel. Before she arrived 18 months ago at 
112th Street Elementary School, it was burglarized regularly.

Manuel gives awards to children who excel, and those who focus on science 
get a membership to a special science class. "Being on the science team has 
made her study even more," says Sophia Young, 32, about her 9-year-old 
daughter Emiyah Johnson. Her son, Travis Dumas, 12, wants to be a scientist. 
"I tell them life isn't easy but you only have to worry about your 
schoolwork," says Young, who checks her children's homework daily and 
assigns them homework if the teacher did not. "My kids want to go to big 
universities, so I tell them it starts now." And Manuel's efforts at 112th 
Street have done more than make the school safer. "Parents are talking to 
teachers now, we know each other's kids now and parents are learning 
[English] with their kids," says Martha Perez, 34, who stands at the gate of 
112th Street Elementary every morning to welcome Spanish-speaking parents in 
Spanish.

Corporate America Steps In

Educational leaders such as Manuel are getting help from some progressive 
companies.

"To attract people to our profession. we thought it would be great to teach 
ethics in the classroom," says Tony Buzzelli, national managing partner of 
U.S. regions for Deloitte & Touche, one of the 2006 DiversityInc 25 
Noteworthy Companies.

Deloitte & Touche partnered with Junior Achievement, a nationally renowned 
program that utilizes executive/student interaction in the classroom to 
teach children about ethics in economics and daily life. One thousand of 
Deloitte's employees volunteer for the Junior Achievement program. 
Deloitte's need to create a pipeline is clear; in 2004, only 3 percent of 
new graduates hired by certified-public-accountant (CPA) firms were black, 
and only 6 percent were Latino, according to the American Institute for 
CPAs.

During Deloitte's annual Impact Day, where Deloitte employees volunteer to 
paint a school in a poor neighborhood and help refurbish classrooms, the Los 
Angeles-based office partners with United Way and 30 other community 
organizations to discuss health with parents. Too often, poor parents are 
not informed about the medical services available to them, and their 
children's health and educational capabilities are affected, says Buzzelli.

Deloitte also opens its offices for half a day to poor children, providing 
them access to a corporate world.

"Our profession is one of the few where you don't need capital to be 
successful, so the barriers to our profession are not high-some work, some 
education," says Buzzelli. "Eighty percent of the [300] partners in the 
[Pacific Southwest] region were first or second in their family to go to 
college. So when a lot of us look back, a lot of us have a sense of empathy 
for disadvantaged children-a lot of us see ourselves in these kids."

Virginia Victorin was one of those poor East Los Angeles children who 
wondered what happened in the big buildings downtown. Now, she is vice 
president of corporate and employee giving at Washington Mutual.

"Downtown L.A. for me was where 'other people' worked when I was a kid," 
says Victorin, who grew up in Boyle Heights, a poor neighborhood in East Los 
Angeles. Washington Mutual, in partnership with Junior Achievement, brought 
400 children from low-income neighborhoods in Los Angeles to the city's 2005 
Black Business Expo.

"We brought in a group of women managers who were African American and 
Latina, and it was the first time these African-American and Latino 
high-school students saw Latina and African-American women as bankers," says 
Victorin. "Many students asked, 'How do you get from the streets to the 
suites?' The answer is by having people who care about me share with me what 
it took for them."

Washington Mutual recently started the Academy of Finance with Los Angeles' 
Manuel Arts High School. Sophomores to seniors at Manuel Arts learn about 
finance, how to buy and own a home and why the home is a family's most 
important investment. Washington Mutual also works with the Pasadena, 
Calif.-based Frostig Center, a school for children with learning 
disabilities.

"Kids are resilient. We didn't know we were poor. Kids don't know that it's 
different until they see the inequities. Kids realize that education . 
provides hope . which motivates them to take on the challenge of attending a 
four-year institution that will enrich their lives," says Victorin.